Outdoor Lighting Fixtures: Latest and Greatest Trends

Blogger Ashley of Make it-Love it created an easy tutorial on how to etch a glass trifle bowl. If you are a fan of glass etching and traditional style decor like me, you will also appreciate eHow Contributor Brian Adler’s article on how to use a fluorescent black light to identify authentic vintage etched glass. Why am I talking about decorative glass at all? Hinkley Outdoor Lighting presents its Chateau Collection of intricately embossed amber sconces. Yes, it has a traditional design and museum bronze finish but I can’t stop admiring the glass!

Glass Etching

Etched glass, rococo patterns and frosted surfaces were most popular during 1876 to 1914. See the pub glass above? Victorians were fond of decorating glassware, mirrors and windows with scrollwork. How do you detect a faux antique? Brian Adler recommends holding the etched glass up to a fluorescent black light. If modern diamond cutting tools have been used, then the item will glow pink. Neat trick, huh?

If you don’t have a preference for authentic antiques, consider doing modern crafts and etch your own serving dishes. If you visit the Make-it Love-it blog post on etched glass you’ll learn how to cut a stencil out of vinyl, adhere it to glass, apply etching cream, and create your own decorative item. Please read the warnings about handling acid-based etching cream. Also find out if the etching results will be food safe and oven proof if you are presenting these as gifts.

I feel so happy when I visit the Getty Villa in Malibu. What is my favorite feature besides the ancient art? The landscaping. Whenever, I visit the grounds, I make sure to spend at least 15 minutes to meditate on the beauty of the tranquil pond with water lilies.

Maybe you are considering creating a backyard pond.

Laguna Ponds and Pond Plants Direct have these three tips to impart.

Select a curvy rather than geometrical shape with sharp angles for better water circulation.Why? Because water can stagnate in sharp corners. This can cause a challenge in keeping algae under control. What shapes are recommended? Jelly bean and kidney shapes.

Add a pump to keep water moving to prevent the accumulation of mosquito larva. If you also select a pond location away from overhanging trees, this will reduce the water contamination by falling leaves.

Avoid highlighting hoses and pumps with accent lighting. If you spend time collecting rocks of various sizes for a natural look, you don’t want to overexpose artificial elements with landscape lighting such as hoses and pumps. Instead use 1539BS Submersible Pond Light by Hinkley Outdoor Lighting to draw attention to your floating hyacinth or Anacharis. Yellow water lilies are especially pretty at night. These plants absorb nitrates and assist in controlling algae. Why not point your accent lighting at these natural features instead?

Getty Villa Pond Lilies

Whether you have a 50 gallon or 3,000 gallon pond you can display colorful fish, swaying plants and graceful fountains with the help of submersible pond lights by Hinkley Outdoor Lighting.

What do you think of when you picture a trellis? Climbing plants, right? What are three benefits to building an architectural trellis? According to a blog named Build trellis systems can add pleasant detail to a project, warm up a facade and provide cover from the elements. Hinkley Outdoors Lighting presents a collection of traditional outdoor post lights named Trellis as seen here.

Trellis Post Light Fixtures by Hinkley Outdoor Lighting

Is there more than one kind of canopy a trellis can provide? If you are a beginning wine grape grower, the following information from Mark Greenspan of Wine Business Monthly can be useful. He describes the objective of trellis system as maximizing the leaf area of the grapes capture more sun and gain more productivity in cooler climates. He splits trellis systems into three easy to understand types: head-trained, non-divided and divided.

Trellis System for Coastal Vineyard

What does a head-trained trellis system look like? Don’t expect an irrigation system. Wine growers choose this mainly for the beauty of vines that trail near the ground. What are some disadvantages? Since these climbing plants are trained to hang onto a vertical trunk only and fruit to droop, the fruit ripens unevenly because of the blanket of leaves. Despite the difficulty of choosing a head-trained trellis system, it is the preferred method for Zinfandel. BBCGoodFood.com can tell you more about Zinfandel wine pairings with mushroom and venison dishes.

Venison

What is the non-divided trellis method? This is a system uses a T-shape with movable wires to lift foliage away from fruit. This way the climbing plants do not overheat. Where is this used? Coastal vineyards use this method. What are some downsides? This method is not meant for vigorous kinds of plants that grow quickly and can overpower the lifting system.

How is the divided trellis method different from the other two? Wine grape growers divide their vigorous, quick climbing plants into two fruit zones either vertically or horizontally. This is not meant for warm climates because plants would be exposed to excessive sunlight and heat.

What are a few ways to update your outdoor space for 2012? You can borrow from the “Process” trend from the Benjamin Moore ColorPulse convention. You can show off your food growing process by shaping your vegetable garden into mazes since the trend encourages the theme of journeys.

Why not choose handicraft outdoor furniture that uses polyester nautical rope? Try woven seats with new technology that makes it as beautiful as it is durable. Consider eggshell white or matte gray for lounging in your garden patio. These modern style backyard accessories are pared down to the essentials. In other words, there are no extra parts to protrude or trip your guests. Add the Cascade ADA compliant wall lighting and you have a considerate, beautiful and modern patio decorated for entertaining in the new year.

If you haven’t watched BBC Scotland’s “Monarch of the Glen” t.v. series, you must give it a peek. This drama has many humorous moments. Imagine if you lived your life as non-gentry and one day you had to oversee a manor house as a feudal lord.

What are manor homes? This type of architecture may have been former monasteries because Henry VIII gave his favorites abbeys and priories as private country homes. These homes were partially fortified with moats, drawbridges, gate houses and watchtowers to defend against thieves. You can consider these lesser castles that would not be able to withstand a siege.

Hoggeston Manor

Three famous manor houses include Garsington Manor, Linford Manor and Kemerton Court. The BBC fiction is based in Glenbogle, Scotland. What did these properties include? These were the homes of feudal lords. The land included farm buildings and workers such as stewards and bailiffs to assist the gentry.

Bletchley Park Manor Interior

Hinkley Outdoors Lighting creates a traditional style outdoor wall light called Manor House for the everyman. You don’t have to be part of the gentry to afford these refined traditional outdoor sconces. If you like 16th century architecture and design of France and the British Isles, this design will appeal to you.

Home decor trends for 2012 invite you to experiment with European interpretations of the Asian aesthetic. Katherine Hepburn had a preference for Chinese red for her home decor. The Getty Museum also features an exhibit called “Imagining the Orient”. France in the 17th century and Europe in general was fascinated with Chinese and Japanese art. The French borrowed red Chinese lacquer to create multicultural French furnishings. The chinoiserie produced during this time also included hybrid French Chinese porcelain. German Jesuit Priest, Father Schall von Bell is featured in wool and silk tapestries in the Qing court costumed in Imperial dress. Even Ralph Lauren this past fall dressed his model in Chinoiserie patterns and red lacquer heels.

Chinoiserie Wall Covering

How can I decorate my home exterior in this style without being gaudy? Stick to black and white light fixtures for your yard such as Pearl by Hinkley Outdoor Lighting. Use natural elements such as living plants, stone furniture and wooden accessories for your landscaping. Organically grown peonies, orchids, and water lilies are usually associated with Asian cultures. Save the brighter decorations for indoors but free free to decorate outdoors with bright living plants and living koi in a pond. Research Eastern religious symbols before displaying them so as to avoid offending your neighbors.

Home Decor French Chinoiserie

In 2012, the trendy colors include dark red, coral, cobalt blue and silver. Pearlized metals are also encouraged. If you like silk, embroidery and bird motifs you can bring some Art Nouveau and mix it with 2012 sensibilities. Art Nouveau decor also has a fascinated with the East and borrowed many flower patterns from Japanese paintings. Since Hinkley Outdoor Lighting calls the post light above Pearl, you can see the reference to a jewels highly prized by Eastern culture. Pearl is from the Oriental outdoor post lighting category, this is a loose interpretation of Asian design.

Pearl Post Lighting Chinoiserie by Hinkley Outdoor Lighting

If you love kimonos, jade and tortoise shell hair accessories, chinoiserie may be for you. Think of the 1930s and Marlene Dietrich costumes inspired by the East. If your outdoor landscaping includes Thai pagodas, Japanese bonsai and Chinese jade you’ll like Pearl by Hinkley Outdoor Lighting.

Take your modern decor one step further with 2-light Kube outdoor ceiling lights by Hinkley Outdoor Lighting. These outdoor LED lighting fixtures come in bronze, satin white or satin black finish. Let’s say you updated your interiors for 2012 with cobalt blue wall art, coral walls and acrylic furniture. Take the geek-chic to the next level with Kube. Kube looks like pixels. Pixilated 3D art is in for the new year.

It’s always winter and never Christmas. Would this lament bother you? This is the complaint of the fictional Narnians under the rule of C.S. Lewis’s White Witch. It may not bother you to have winter without Christmas.

I’m currently reading The Soul of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by Gene Veith after I finished reading Laura Miller’s The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia. You may be contemplating the winter holidays now that it is the first of December.

Did you notice that C.S. Lewis is anti-school throughout his Narnia series just as Roald Dahl was in his autobiography, Boy? The British school system seemed horrid to these two writers of beloved children’s books such as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Matilda. In constrast, another British writer, J.K. Rowling is pro-school in her thrilling invention of Hogwarts.

Though you may have ambivalent feelings towards Christmas, undoubtedly Oxford pendant lamps by Hinkley Outdoor Lighting will make you envision the less controversial conventions of winter holidays. This traditional outdoor hanging lighting fixture may make you long for a visit to Oxford University’s Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaelogy. I am most interested in the 1715 Stradivarius violin kept there. Hinkley Outdoor Lighting references the 11th century federation of colleges, Oxford. Do you think of the Castle Mill Stream and the Oxford Rail Station when you look at this hanging light? I do.

You’ve probably had enough pumpkin pie this Thanksgiving. You probably won’t want dessert until Hanukkah or Christmas. Instead you might turn up the heater, to fight the winter chill. Maybe you are dreaming of warm weather and hot travel destinations. I like to imagine that I’m training for a Polar Bear dive in January. This pretending keeps me in shape during the winter months.

What if you could go diving for shipwrecks among the coral reefs of the Florida Keys? You’d be bronze and super fit. You would marvel at all the colorful, saltwater fish.

Why not spice up your winter by bringing Key West by Hinkley Outdoor Lighting to your door step? If you can’t go to Florida, why not re-create Florida in your home? Start this winter by installing Key West outdoor wall lights for your porch and patio. Hinkley Outdoor Lighting will help spark your creativity with its outdoor sconces. Send an evite to your friends for two weeks from now. Insist on a Key West-themed party. Yes, this winter.

Serve Florida’s state dessert, the key lime pie. I’m not joking! It became the official state pie in 2006. Think of the key lime trees from Malaysia that were brought to the new world by the Spanish in the 1500s. Think key lime juice, sweetened condensed milk and graham cracker pie crust. Maybe you can create a skinny cocktail with those flavors. Play steel drum music from the Florida Keys. Use your imagination to fight cabin fever. Give yourself the gift of Key West traditional outdoor sconces and turn your home into a hot winter hang out.

Did you watch the royal wedding of Kate Middleton? If you did but don’t like to admit it that’s okay. Against our better sense, the life of royalty intrigues us. One billion American viewers tuned in at 4 A.M. Central time to watch the British wedding.

If you follow the Game of Thrones series, Tyrion Lannister is baffled by his countrymen’s response to Prince Joffrey’s bride. Why are the people cheering for her? Doesn’t she come from the tribe that held them under siege? Again, our curiosity overwhelms judgment.

Hinkley Outdoor Lighting presents its Regal Collection that includes the traditional flush mount ceiling lighting fixture pictured. The black granite finish cast aluminum will stir your imagination. Maybe you will think of Gothic Revival architecture. You envision battlements and parapets for defense. Late 12th Century French gothic architecture was modeled after the lofty Saint-Denis abbey. Even if you don’t have a fortress for a home, you can still enjoy Regal outdoor ceiling light fixture’s water seedy glass and 4-candle bulbs. Who can argue with Regal’s formidable and majestic appearance?

This is perfect for homeowners who admire benevolent rulers. Ask your friends to enjoy hospitality at your home for holiday feasting fit for a king! Will roast swan and stuffed eel be on your Christmas menu?